Life lessons from Monet

1of11"Monet and the Seine," at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston through Feb. 1, includes "The Church at Vétheuil," 1879. Monet observed the building for years.Photo: Southampton City Art Gallery

2of11Claude Monet painted "The Seine near Giverny" more than a decade before his "Mornings on the Seine" series showed the same location.Photo: Rhode Island School of Design

3of11"Morning on the Seine, near Giverny," 1897.Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

4of11"Morning on the Seine, Giverny," 1897.Photo: Mead Art Museum

5of11"The Bridge at Argenteuil." Photo: National Gallery of Art

6of11"The Floating Ice."Photo: Shelburne Museum

7of11"Ice Floes," 1893.Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art

8of11"Effect of the Sun Setting, the Seine at Port-Villez," 1883.Photo: Arkansas Arts Center

9of11"The Seine at Bougival."Photo: Currier Museum of Art

10of11"Ships Riding on the Seine at Rouen," 1872/1873.Photo: National Gallery of Art

11of11"The Seine at Lavacourt," 1880.Photo: Dallas Museum of Art

Last Friday was the grayest of days. Somehow it was turning into a rough week. Lost keys, trouble at work when I was supposed to be off, canceled plans. I had written a piece about how the new year was about starting over, putting the past away, trying new things. But I was sliding right into hypocrisy: I couldn't let some things go.

My friend Sarah asked us meet her at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — I was leaving my son Christopher with her so he could have a sleepover with her son Matthew. We were just going to do a drop-off, but like being in Paris, you never know what will happen, and just as I was calling her from the gift shop, pining over jewelry I didn't need, she said, "Come on up. We're here looking at the Monets."

Miraculously, my membership hadn't expired — I didn't even have to get out my wallet — and Christopher and I were in. There were lots of people and a pianist was playing from Da Camera. His name is Andrew Staupe. We could hear him even before we saw one painting. I was starting to cheer up. Who doesn't like Monet? Who doesn't like music?

The problem was I had been longing for Paris, or at least something like France, for a while. I hadn't been in so long. The last time I was there, I had walked through the streets, waited in the longest line in Paris with my friend Gail to see the Édouard Manet exhibit at the Musée D'Orsay. Now, I know there is a big difference between a Manet and a Monet, but at the Musée D'Orsay you have plenty of both. I couldn't believe how much they had. The French are good at many things, including excess. You could spend a long time looking at all those paintings, those remarkable strokes, colors that make you concede that a lot of art conveys a joy that defies words.

Anyway, on the grayest of days, I am in Houston, but Monet comes to me — his obsession with the Seine at the ready. Long before he had even thought of a waterlily, he had been drawn to the waters of the Seine. The exhibit is called "Monet and the Seine: Impressions of a River," and the quotation that sticks with me is the painter's statement "I have painted the Seine throughout my life, at every hour, at every season. I have never tired of it. For me the Seine is always new." I realize this is how I feel about Houston, certain books, certain trees. We all have our own personal Seine, even if we don't know how to paint. We translate our obsessions into different channels, even if they are never displayed.

His family had a shipping supply business. He was interested in ships all right — the geometric beauty of them, the meaning of them captured in certain lights, different times of day. He made them seem like works of art themselves when he translated them into color. Monet did not take over the family business. He had to concentrate on art. There are only 24 hours in a day — you can't do everything. Even if each hour offers a new way of looking at things, even if you look at the Seine from Le Havre, Paris, Rouen.

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Doni M. Wilson, a frequent contributor to Gray Matters, is a professor of English at Houston Baptist University and has a middle schooler named Christopher. Her interests include 20th-century literature, classical music, and creative nonfiction.

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In the exhibit's first room, you get a sense of Monet's excitement when you read what he thinks about the Normandy coast: "Every day I discover still more beautiful things. It's enough to drive one mad, I've got such a desire to do everything, my head explodes.... I want to struggle, scrape off, begin again.... It seems to me, when I see nature, that I will do it all, write it down." The part you cannot deny is that Monet does — he writes it all up on his canvases, uses color to help us see what he sees. He places nature in a way that helps us to sense its wonder, to make sense of it, to long for it. We see what moves Monet, understand a little better what is going on in his head. This is the generosity of the artist: He or she does not hold back.

Some of my favorite paintings are from when Monet lived at Argenteuil. In "Argenteuil," two red boats! So bright! The joy of them, sitting on the Seine! You will never look at a simple boat again in the same way. That is for sure.

Maybe the most famous painting is "The Bridge at Argenteuil," 1874. It is summer in the painting — a sunny day, some gray clouds, but not like today during my tour, not slate gray. Monet pulls me out of my lull. The placard reads: "Painted on a glorious summer day in 1874, it conveys a feeling of delight and pleasure and denies any sense of disappointment Monet must have felt at the harsh criticism heaped on himself and his friends at the first Impressionist exhibition earlier that year." You can learn a lot from an artist — and not just about painting.

The greatness of the painting is only really understood when you step back and get some distance — see it from a little far away. You could touch that water. Huge bridge, white sails, small rowboat, a tiny umbrella, clouds gray and white but still sunny — there is always a lot going on at the same time in a Monet painting, even if you think things are still. I have seen this painting before, in books, on notecards, in calendars. But I haven't really seen it until today.

In the middle of looking, something happens. I meet a former student of mine, Nikki Moss. She has a beautiful voice, sings. She has amazing musical talent. We run into each other often: Jones Hall, now here. She seems so grown-up to me now. She is with an artist from New York. His wife is from Texas. His name is Jim Lambert. He tells me the most astonishing thing: He has a huge 60-by-80 inch painting of Mona Lisa in his apartment in New York. French journalists are coming to see it, interview him. He made it of red and green pixels that have 200 initials of artists he knows. Most of them work at a restaurant while trying to be artists at the same time. They are young artists — Jim tells me he wanted to embed their initials to pay homage to them. I ask if these pixels are like Pisarro, Seurat? He says yes. I tell him he is a neo-neo-Impressionist. He says yes. He tells me he has a secret formula for his painting. It looks like a stained-glass window, in his apartment in New York. I think of all the art that we don't see, the paintings of the Seine that were in Monet's house before he became famous, before he was exhibited in every city you can think of. You never know what will happen.

During the exhibit, you feel the unspoken drama of Monet's life that the paintings hide: financial struggles and success, the sad death of his wife, the coldest winter in memory. You see the traces of progress: Railroad bridges, a marvel of modern technology, punctuate the nature that dominates his canvases. Monet does exclude the struggles of nature: ice floes, frozen rivers, colder climes. I think of how the curator perfectly describes Monet's impressionism: his "nervously flickering yet controlled brush move and a high-keyed palette." You could think of worse formulas for translating nature and how we feel about it.

My favorite painting is "The Willows" from 1880. It is so beautiful, with so many strokes, so much work put into it. It is a painting of willow trees after a hard winter. It is a painting about what it looks like when the gray goes away. His wife, Camille, died in 1879. She was often his muse. During that winter, the Seine froze solid. Then, later, "The Willows." Some of the winter paintings look like they were shellacked with a white, gauzy haze. But then, color, warmth, the paintings of the spring. I think about that a long time. I think about it for days.

When I finish looking at everything, I realize that hardly any of the paintings are from the same place. They have come from all over: San Francisco, Rochester, Scotland, Japan, Washington, Paris, Atlanta, Richmond, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Toronto, Australia, Ann Arbor, South Carolina, Amherst, the Tate in London. Some come from mysterious, unnamed places where the paintings hang in private collections. I marvel: Someone had to circle the globe to get all of these paintings that view one French river. I feel lucky, decadent, like having caviar or truffles for no good reason. The logistics of the exhibit defy the serenity of the works themselves.

I think of Monet in his simple rowboat, with a cabin he built for protection, so he could be allowed different views of the Seine.

When I leave the exhibit, I go to the gift shop. I have already received gifts that I can't put in a bag. I say I won't buy anything, but I do. There is no kitsch as irresistible as the kitsch of French Impressionism. Umbrellas, scarves, books, earrings, mouse pads of paintings of the Seine, books about French food, tours, nonchalance. I buy a book by Guy de Maupassant because it has a story about an affair that I have not read — how can this be? I buy a small print of "The Willows," a postcard for my friend John in Chicago.

It is around six, already dark. I still haven't found my keys, but I feel better about things. I drive out into the Houston evening, leave the city behind. It is as misty as a morning on the Seine.